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Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Yay, I can post pictures of all my holiday gift knitting! Hope you enjoy, and leave links to your holiday projects in the comments for me to look at, too!

Gifted to: Allyson, although when I started this, I didn't know that they would be for her! However, when I was done, I knew that I wanted to give these colorwork beauties to someone who would really appreciate them, and needed something extra special this Christmas. I guess I started a lot of projects this year without knowing who'd they would go to!

Yarn: Knit Picks Palette in 7 colors. The yarn and pattern came as part of a kit that I received for Christmas in 2011. There's colorwork charts that correspond to the months October through March, and enough yarn in the kit to make 6 pairs of mittens. That's a lot of fiddly colorwork mittens, so I'm proud to have finished at least one pair in 2012!

Needles: Size 2 circs with a 40" wire for magic loop. These would be super annoying on DPN's.

Modifications: The pattern recommends a size 1 needle, but after I swatched, I realized my gauge was way off. And I'm not the only one - countless others on Ravelry said that they went up one or even two needle sizes in order to get mittens that fit. Part of that is the tiny needles - but the pattern is also written very small. These mittens were fitted on me (and Allyson), and I have tiny hands. I think I'll try knitting the next pair on a size 3 needle and see how it goes, or add a border of extra background stitches.

I also added 4 more stitches to the thumb, which was worryingly small, and just worked those extra 4 stitches in the background color around the thumb pattern.

Watched While Knitting: Season 1 of Friday Night Lights. Everyone's been talking about this show for years, and I was all like, "Yeah, but I don't like football!" I'm dumb - this show is awesome. The camera work and characters are both equally amazing, and I think now that the holidays are over (I go crazy for Christmas movies), Chris and I will watch more.

These are great! You're right, a knitter could really appreciate the work that went into them. I'd like to try colorwork mittens, but use something like Noro for the foreground pattern, where I don't have to worry about changing yarn with every color. Friday night lights helped me breeze through several projects. I've been wanting to rematch it but, I get emotionally invested in Matt's life, lol. The first episode I was like, "this is exactly like our town!" And it is.